ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways that teachers use examples in mathematics teaching and aims to raise one’s awareness of the importance of choosing and using them with care. Teachers mainly use examples in mathematics teaching in two ways. The first is in connection with teaching mathematical concepts and procedures. The second is in the provision of exercises for students. These two kinds of use are different and may require different choices. The chapter focuses on these two purposes, but examples fulfil two more important roles: as counterexamples and ‘generic’ examples. Learning the concept of ‘square’, for example, is marked by growing awareness of the various ways that squares can vary dimensions of variation, such as side-length, orientation and colour, and the variants that do not qualify as squares those that cannot vary, such as the number of sides, relative side-lengths and angles.
